Dog Pure Awareness blog

My son just got 4 baby chicks and he lets them roam around the yard while he’s watching them in the evening. We put Shiro in the house but he found an open door, and with the chicks wandering freely, Shiro came trotting into the yard and came right to me, ignoring the birds. He then lay down and seemed to be pretending not to see them (in psychology it’s called ‘denial’). But the chicks had no experience with predators and were basically without fear, so one of them flew right up to his head, close enough to his large mouth to be disappeared in an instant. Shiro raised his head and went into his ‘high alert’ mode. I froze. This is a dog who preys on wild turkeys, and whose idea of a walk is to go hunting. But he knew that he couldn’t eat the chickens. He didn’t touch the baby chick.
This is really being in two worlds. Can you imagine the restraint it took to leave that chick flying next to his head alone?